Saturday, 22 July 2017

"Many Muslims and mosques victims of attacks in the West”, Letters 19 July

LETTER TO SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST:

Adeel Malik's letter is a litany of victimhood.("Many Muslims and mosques victims of attacks in the West", Letters 19 July).Malik, chairman of the Muslim Council of Hong Kong, wants us to believe that all the ills of the world are the fault of the West. From the mess in the Middle East to Islamophobia none has anything to do with Islam.

Many people buy this narrative. I don't. But it's not my aim to dispute it in these pages.

Rather, I'd like to ask chairman Malik if he has read the recent startling report in the New York Times about his coreligionists in Hong Kong who have become recruiters for the Islamic State. That's right: some Indonesian helpers are finding their life in Hong Kong "too lonely and meaningless".So what else to do but become a recruiter for ISIS? (Note that Filipinas, with exactly the same pressures, don't default to recruiting for violence).

The Times article suggests that Islamic bodies in Hong Kong -- the Muslim Council of Hong Kong for example -- step in to turn these young women away from their incipient terrorism.

I wonder if Mr Malik is aware of this situation and if so has his organisation done anything about it?

Or will they not, and then claim that a future terrorist attack on Hong Kong is the fault of the West?

"...it is the duty of those who have accepted Islam to strive unceasingly to convert or subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state."

-- Bernard Lewis, renowned historian of Islam and the Middle East, in The Political Language of Islam, p72-3.

In other words:

"Islam is unique among religions of the world in having a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers."